EYFS

Intent

In the Reception class at Radford Semele C of E Primary School our overarching principles and aims are:

Our school “Values for Life” underpin all of our interactions with children, promoting hard work, resilience and kind behaviour.

 We aim to provide the highest quality care and education for all of our children, thereby giving them a strong foundation for their future learning. “Every child deserves the best possible start in life and the support that enables them to fulfil their potential. Children develop quickly in the early years and a child’s experiences between birth and age five have a major impact on their future life chances.” -Revised EYFS framework 2021.

We plan a broad, exciting, and challenging curriculum which meets the requirements of the statutory framework for the EYFS. The framework ensures high standards of early education and care and should reassure parents that their child’s development is being fully supported.

There are three prime areas within the framework that are particularly important for building a foundation for igniting children’s curiosity and enthusiasm for learning, forming relationships, and thriving.

• Communication and language - the development of children’s spoken language underpins all seven areas of learning and development
• Children’s personal, social and emotional development (PSED) – is crucial for children to lead healthy and happy lives and is fundamental to their cognitive development
•  Physical activity - is vital for children’s all-round development enabling them to pursue happy, healthy and active lives

There are four specific areas, through which the three prime areas are strengthened and applied:

• Literacy - It is crucial for children to develop a life-long love of reading. Reading consists of two dimensions - comprehension of language and word reading. Writing involves transcription (spelling and handwriting) and composition (articulating ideas and structuring them in speech before writing)
• Mathematics - Developing a strong grounding in numbers is essential so that all children develop the necessary building blocks to excel mathematically. Children should be able to count confidently and develop a deep understanding of the numbers to 10 including the relationships between them and the patterns within those numbers
• Understanding the World - This involves guiding children to make sense of their physical world and their community
• Expressive Arts and Design - The development of children’s artistic and cultural awareness supports their imagination and creativity

Characteristics of Effective Learning

The Characteristics of Effective Learning (CoEL) form part of the EYFS framework and describes behaviours children use to learn

• Playing and exploring – Children investigate and experience things and events around them and ‘have a go’
• Active learning – Children concentrate and keep trying if they experience difficulties, as well as enjoying what they achieve
• Creating and thinking critically – Children develop their own ideas, make links between ideas, and develop strategies for doing things

We aim to ensure the CoEL are embedded within our practice to: inform our planning; provide open ended, child initiated activities and resources; encourage independent access to resources within our environment; support how we interact with children, supporting them and scaffolding their next steps.

Implementation

Induction and Transition

We provide a transition programme so that parents are provided with the information they need and have plenty of opportunities to ask questions. It also ensures that we get to know the children before they start school. Induction and transition include the following:

• An induction meeting for parents which provides an opportunity to meet school staff (including lunch staff and wrap around clubs), a presentation of information about starting school and a look around the environment
• All children are visited by staff at their pre-school
• All children and parents are invited to the school open day and sports day
• Several “stay and play” sessions are run
• Recognising the value of the parents as the first educator of their child, home visits are carried out in September. This is an important opportunity to exchange information and to discover the child’s likes, dislikes and interests. It also very effectively strengthens the teacher/parent partnership

Partnership with Parents and Carers

We recognise the huge importance of establishing effective relationships with parents/carers in ensuring the children achieve their full potential through:

• The transition process
• Staff available at the start and end of every day to address parents questions/concerns
• A class webpage, school newsletters
• “Evidence Me” to share learning and “WOW” moments that occur at school and at home
• Parent/carer workshops to enable them to support their child’s learning
• Learning celebrations

Safeguarding and Children’s Welfare

Children learn best when they are happy, safe and feel secure. We aim to ensure this through the continuous development of positive relationships between children and staff as well as relationships with their peers. We follow the safeguarding and welfare requirements detailed in the Early Years Foundation Stage Guidance. Our school has rigorous Safeguarding and welfare policy and procedures that are used to identify anyone at risk or harm of radicalisation that sets out clear procedures for reporting any concerns. See our School’s Child Protection and Safeguarding Policy

We set clear boundaries to help us stay safe. We teach children to be consciously aware of their feelings and the feelings of others and how to manage their own behaviour by identifying behavioural issues and using them as a teaching moment. We also aim to teach our children to take risks whilst learning how to recognise and avoid hazards.

Should accidents occur an emergency contact form is completed for all children on entry into school, which includes medical, personal and social details. Other than minor cuts and bruises, all accidents on school premises are recorded in the School Accident Book and parents are informed.

Special educational needs and disability (SEND) and Inclusion

We value the diversity of all children our school. We believe that all our children matter. We give our children every opportunity to achieve their best. We do this by taking account of our children’s range of life experiences when planning for their learning.

Assessments and teacher observations are used to identify children who may have specific needs within the first half term and ongoing through each child’s primary education. Results of assessments are used to ensure that a differentiated curriculum is offered to such children to meet their needs.

Our EYFS Curriculum

• is at the heart of our learning journey approach
•  is distinctive, innovative and strategically planned with the individual pupil in mind
•  is reviewed in the light of national developments, new thinking and research and development
• introduces challenging, engaging and real life problems
•  strives to encourage and develop a love of learning
• allows learning to happen within a child centred approach
• ensures resources and apparatus are available to support learning at every stage of development
• ensures resources and apparatus are available to support learning in every area of the EYFS curriculum
• includes fundamental British values to teach children a sense of self and belonging, enabling them to learn and stay true to the values that make people good human beings
• ensures that children learn to live together peacefully, with each of them playing a valuable role in the multicultural world in which they live

Planning

Our planning is based on children’s interests, seasonal celebrations and loose themes. We ensure that there is a balance of planned adult led activities and child initiated play activities. Planning is changed and tailored regularly ensuring all teaching and learning is relevant and challenging for each child.

Adult led activities. At specific times in the day the children will take part in an activity that is teacher led. Whole class daily literacy, phonics and maths/counting experiences are taught. Children also work in small adult led groups to complete a literacy and maths task each week. The tasks are often open ended and are differentiated through questioning, expectations and the practitioner’s knowledge of the child and the curriculum.

During child initiated activities the adults’ role is to show an interest in the children’s ideas, build conversation, model sentence structure, introduce new vocabulary, facilitate and share ideas and model different skills. Such interaction with the children is essential as this helps to build the children’s understanding and therefore guides new learning. This is then re-fed back into the planning in order to ensure that the topics being covered reflect the children’s fascinations currently within the class. By being fluid in this way current topics can be readily introduced and adapted. This allows for spontaneity within our Foundation Stage and allows for unexpected occurrences, such as a butterfly in class, birthdays, new siblings, a windy day, the window cleaner etc to become an integral part of our learning.

Our environment and the importance of play

“Play is essential for children’s development, building their confidence as they learn to explore, relate to others, set their own goals and solve problems.” Statutory framework for the EYFS 2021

Play is very much valued, we understand children learn best from activities and experiences that they have initiated as this often evolves into deep engagement and sustained learning. We always use both the indoor and the outdoor classroom as this provides activities on different scales and acknowledges that children have different needs and learning styles. We carefully plan our environment, ensuring it provides opportunities across all seven areas of the curriculum and reflects the interests of the children. We also make sure that children have the opportunity to extend and practise the skills that they have learned through direct teaching.

Play provides opportunities to develop children’s communication skills, listening and responding to others appropriately. Adults support this by modelling speech, echoing and extending children explore and develop learning experiences, helping them make sense of the world. They practise and build up ideas and learn how to control themselves and understand the need for rules.

Impact

How is our curriculum monitored and reviewed and how is children’s progress assessed?

Monitoring

The standard of teaching and learning is monitored by lesson observations, pupil voice, analysis of data action plans and the performance management process.

Assessment

The impact of our provision can be measured by the attainment each child has made over the year. We track this through various forms of assessment.

Formative assessments often involve immediate feedback and next steps are given when appropriate. These will then inform our planning and any interventions that may be needed.

Summative assessments take place on entry and at the end of each term. These take the form of teacher assessments in maths, phonics, reading and writing. A personal profile for each child is written which covers the 7 areas of the curriculum, this is added to each term and so builds up to show the unique learning journey of each child.

Our knowledge of each child is then input into Target tracker each term to provide an overview of the whole class attainment and progress. It enables us to see gaps in children’s learning, track particular groups of children and focus on individuals who may need extra support.

At the end of EYFS the Early Learning Goals form a holistic, best fit judgement about a child’s development and readiness for Y1. ELG’s define the level of development children are expected to have attained by the end of EYFS.